huh. that's big.

The pergola is finally up, though not finished being painted, and, well, its big. really big. way bigger than we anticipated.

When you see the dimensions on the blue print you don't really get the same feeling as when its finally up and about the size of your house. As daunting as the size of the pergola is, everything is coming together very nicely. They have almost completed work on the dry creak bed but there is still a whole lot more to do before phase one is finished. It's hard to believe that they're going to try to finish everything in the next two weeks. Next up, a lawn!

No you can not stick your hand in the wet cement... and other stupid questions

I'm surprised that had to be clarified, but with a child-like gleam in his eye, it was hard to say no to my husband. Honestly it had more to do with the awkward conversation I'd have to have with our contractor than any desire not to have a hand-print in our new walk way.
Yes, a few days ago, the cement was poured, and then started the most insane cold snap to hit the area in a few years. It was so cold that it actually snowed at our house in the middle of the day with the sun out. This may not seem shocking to most people who live where it regularly snows, but where we live this is almost equivalent to it snowing on the beaches of Hawaii. It just doesn't happen. Luckily the weather had little effect on the fresh poured cement and while it made it particularly unpleasant to have a job that required you to work outside for the next week, some more progress with the laying down the sprinklers in the grass area got done. After approving the design for the pergola with the subcontractor (again) it seemed like things were really moving. Until I got this call from the subcontractor in the middle of the day at work. Kept in mind this is two days after we've already approved the architectural diagram for the pergola....

Subcontractor: "Hi, We were just calling to confirm some details about the pergola before we order it."
Me: "Yeah, sure."
Subcontractor: "So I see you have six polls in your design". Pause.
Me: "Yes."
Subcontractor: "Great. And they are square?"
Me: "No. They're round. Like in the design."
Subcontractor: <sound of shuffling papers> "Well I guess you could kind of say they look round in the design, but I'll go ahead and firm that up as your choice."
Me: "Okay..."
Subcontractor: "Now the color. You wanted maple correct?"
Me: "Oh, actually I didn't right down the name of the color. He just had a block of color samples with no names and we picked one out."
Subcontractor: "Does maple sound right?"
Me: "I don't know. Do you have the colors on your website or the manufacturers website? I can go there and confirm for you."
Subcontractor: "No. Are you sure it isn't maple?"
Me: "It was a grayish color that matched our house. Does that look like maple?"
Subcontractor: "I'm not sure. I really should order this today."
Me: "I took a picture of the color we chose. I can text it to you. Do you think you could tell by that?"
Subcontractor: "Maybe. Why don't you send it to me and I'll call you back."

Now, he never did call me back. I ended up leaving work early to drive to the showroom which closes at 5pm in an especially sketchy section of a nearby industrial area. Confused the heck our of the secretary when i burst in breathless two minutes before they closed, babbling nonsense of "The durawood colors....<pant, pant>... Where are the durawood colors?" Once I explained the entire situation to her, she was very helpful and we did eventually find the color chart...only to discover maple was correct. Hooray. Much ado about nothing!
A few hours later, the subcontractor did text me back saying maple was the right color and he had submitted the order. At least he did get back to me. Eventually. They called again yesterday to say they would be installing it on Monday. I sent the info on to the contractor who seemed surprised by this, so I don't feel too bad. At least they suck with their communication to everyone and it's not just me. Now let's see what shows up on Monday!

Day 55: feeling more finished

Life Size Blueprints

The backyard was initially estimated to take two months and today marks the two month point. Let me show you our finished backyard...

there's the patio and the pergola...

the planter boxes...

and, of course, the grass...

No, of course, they aren't finished, nor did I expect them to be. In my experience, I have found that contracting estimation dates are 25% experience, 25% luck, 45% fixing others mistakes, and 5% acts of god. It seems this is true no matter what the contracting industry. We've been lucky so far that the weather has only interrupted a few days during the construction, the fiasco with the permits only delayed us about a week, and the mighty lizard gods have decided against sending us a wrathful Godzilla.
We're actually at a very exciting point in the construction process: they have framed out all of the cement areas. Now we can actually walk around the backyard and see exactly how everything will be laid out - sort of like a life-sized blue print. I'm very pleased with some of the design changes we argued for - they look like they are coming out exactly how we envisioned. Come Monday, they will actually be pouring all the cement! With most of the underground work completed at this point, it seems like all the next steps will be building the visual aspect, so things will be changing more quickly from here on. Stay tuned...

A Recommendation for Getting an Engineering Degree

Among the many strange things left by the previous tenants of our house is a partially working security camera system. There is a camera in back and in front. When we moved in, we didn't know if they worked because the place they go to had all the cables slashed (as if someone were removing a DVR in a hurry). This was one of the many things that the police insisted on verifying when they searched the house our first week there. Strangely I had a hard time convincing them there was no recording equipment or DVDs in the house when we got it ("Oh yeah, all that incriminating evidence. Yes, I kept it right here officer. We watch it sometimes when we get bored, very instructive.")
After a few months, my brilliant husband put that engineering degree to good use and fixed everything to go to a monitor so we could see that the cameras did actually work (kinda). The only one that worked well was the one in the back yard and over the course of the next year he got an entire system set up and re-routed into the house so we didn't need a monitor in the attic to see the cameras feeds. Its kinda neat, but sort of creepy at the same time.
However, its usefulness finally outweighed its creepiness! Last week we were on vacation, which was unfortunate, since the first concrete was suppose to be poured for the pergola pillars sometime that week. We were really bummed that we'd be missing this. Then, that genius husband of mine figured out a way to securely stream the camera feed so we could take a look each afternoon after they finished to see what happened the day before. The result ended up being a really cool time lapse:

Husband +2 points

A Lesson in Perseverance

Most of last week was spent digging holes for the pergola posts and as this week drew to a close, I have re-evaluated my conclusion. They are clearly starting their own mining company. Each of the six holes is now a solid 3ft cube. If you've never had the benefit of digging through granite, let me give you some insight into the process...
It took one man 4 days to jack hammer this hole.

And as you can see, it is not a 3ft cube. No, after the jack hammering comes the pick axe, hammer,  and  shoveling...

Until it looks something more like this...

And then do this again, five more times...

After almost two solid weeks of digging, the inspector gets to come and look at the holes, the plans, and then asks for the building permit. Oh the building permit. Wasn't the sub-contractor for the pergola supposed to get that?...
Well apparently its not enough to have applied for the permit, it must also be approved, and mailed out. I'm not entirely sure if the sub-contractor totally dropped the ball on this one or if there were other contributing factors, but the cement trucks that were planned for today did not come.

Day 30 Status: Even MORE holy* backyard

*This type of holy is not approved by the catholic church or our county

Watch Out For That First Step

With the season and then the time change it has become almost impossible to get a picture of the backyard each day. By the time I'm home from work its been dark almost two hours and its dark when I leave for work. While this is obnoxious from a photographic perspective, it's positively deadly from an exploratory perspective. There are no lights in the backyard, so the phrase "I'm going to check out the backyard" has become tantamount to leaving for an amazon underwater caving expedition. It involves flashlights, dangerous ledges, venomous spiders, and a near certainty of ending up muddy....of course, only I would attempt to do this barefooted.
Each night this week, I've crept out with my mega flashlight (useful for alerting medical aircraft in where to land and blinding/angering small animals) to view the progress on the backyard. It at first was attempted while still in my work heels, but then I discovered that to be safety hazard (to the heels), and switched to bare feet (always safe in a construction zone, as it provides better traction and quick alerting to lost sharp tools or materials). It's actually quite difficult to tell what if any progress was being made. Now with most of the trenches filled up with dirt, they seemed to be focusing on the side yard garden boxes - measuring and staking in posts for the frames. While searching for signs of progress I discovered several black widows and, accidentally, several unexpectedly muddy areas (found by way of squishy foot contact). However, one night I ventured out to discover some mighty progress had been made. I quite literally stumbled into it.

Oh my. There's a hole. A giant hole just outside our door. That's interesting. Oh look, there's another!

and another...and another...and another...and another...

Eventually I realized they were digging the holes for the pillars of our pergola (like by the third hole at least). Wonderful what exciting progress. Also should probably upgrade to shoes...

Day 25 status: Holy Backyard

See? Its got a halo and everything...

There are Two Kinds of Running Water

In my brief experience of owning a house, I have come to the realization that there are two types of running water. The first is a marvelous invention of humankind and a great convenience in modern living: Intentional Running Water. Such examples include the shower, the toilet, the sink, and all manner of other technological embellishments to improve the standard of living.
The second, as you must have guessed, is Unintentional Running Water. This generally takes the form of exploding toilets, frozen and cracked pipes, and broken faucet valves. Well I have had plenty (shall we say a spoiling?) of experience in the former type, my experience with the later has been quite abundant of recent years.
In chronological order of experience since acquiring the house:

• 0 Days: Shower continuously runs due to broken valve which, happily, can only be ordered by mail directly from the manufacturer. I say "runs" instead of "leaks" because the stream of water it produced while in the off position could have passed for a full strength shower in a campground. Had we known how much water costs in the new county we were moving to, we might have fixed this much sooner than we actually did.
• 4 Days: Clogged toilet with improperly installed o-ring and hole in the floor (also hidden by toilet) caused running water to come out of ceiling vents and light fixtures.
• 1 Week: Garbage disposal that had performed spectacularly for the home inspection decided to die, crack, and leak. While replacing it with the exact same model and brand, I discovered they had changed the unit's input from a male attachment to a female attachment. This required much tetris-ing of the pipes under the sink.
• 2 Weeks: Kitchen Pipes under the sink decide to start leaking. I'm unsure of the cause of this, as at the time we were struggling with a plethora of issues in the house, and had divided the resolution of each problem between the two of us. My husband resolved this issue, which was in no way a consequence of my previous fixing of the garbage disposal and the subsequent tetris-ing of pipes. Honest.
• 3 Months: Death of the refrigerator resulted in miniature kitchen flood.
• 3 Months, 2 Weeks: Death of dishwater, which did not leak, but failed to clean dishes and made the sound of whales giving birth while running. The "Unintentional Running Water" was a direct result of it's replacement: A brand new dishwasher that was missing a small seal at the corner to keep the water in. This resulted in miniature kitchen flood number 2.
• 5 Months: Broken sewage injection pump resulted in filled up sewage tank. If sewage can not get into the tank, it tends to not drain. I'm not sure its entirely fair to include this in the "Unintentional Running Water" list because we caught the issue about an inch before the tank actually overflowed, but it did result in the cessation of "Intentional Running Water" for the full weekend of our friend's wedding. Everyone loves smelly wedding guests.
• 7 Months: Broken seal on toilet resulting in periodic ghost flushing. I nominate this one for least traumatic event, even if it was not the easiest to fix.
• 8 Months: Self Inflicted: While digging in the front yard I was a little too industrious with the shovel and broken completely buried sprinkler. Thankfully by this point we had learned where the shut off is for both the inside and outside water. Yay learning!
• 1 Year: Partially Self Inflicted: The seal on our back window frame is broken so that when it rains heavily, water collects in the frame on the inside. It doesn't over flow, since its draining on the outside, but if it rains heavily you have a mini puddle in the frame part where the window would slide to open. I mistakenly put a towel in the frame thinking it would just soak up the little bit of water in the window frame tray. Upon checking it a few hours later, I remembered the capillary property of water and we had a full soaked bath towel, a very wet dry wall below the window, and a mini flood on the floor below. Science!
• A few days ago: Learning the pipe under our driveway was likely broken and causing the drive way to crack as it rushed down like a pleasant little water feature!

That brings us to this week...You might recall that the most recent backyard improvement was the appearance of the hose bib. While this was fabulous, it was less exciting for its lack of actual function, not being hooked up to any pipes yet.
This week, it appears as if all the pipes have been laid as we have observed the trenches filled with sand and then dirt until we have something resembling a flat yard again. Yesterday, my husband texted me in the late afternoon with exciting news: That hose bib? yeah, it now works. Water actually comes out of it.
Arriving home later that evening, I popped out to the backyard with anticipation. I was going to turn on the host bib and water would come out. Awesome!
Getting to the first one, I quirked a mischievous smile and twisted the knob. Success! Water came out. After doing my happy dance, I looked around the yard to see that there were dark spots around the other hose bibs where they had obviously been tested earlier in the day. That's when I noticed the large and lengthy dark spot running from where no hose bib was to the end of the yard. Curious, I popped over to find water bubbling up from the ground at an alarming rate. Recalling that a trench had previously run this way, I assumed one of the irrigation pipes burst and rushed to the front to turn off the outside water.

There was indeed a broken pipe, which they dug up, and fixed today. Happily this seems to have been the only issue and now we are looking forward to whatever the next steps are. Cement? Side yard veggie boxes? Finishing the drainage creek? More digging?

Day 18: Trenches-B-gone. Now available in spray foam.

 

Acquiring New Enemies

I will admit now that I purposely try to piss off our mailman. This is a stupid and dangerous thing to do but somehow I can't find myself caring. Let me explain...
Moving into an REO comes with several interesting problems, some of which I've detailed earlier. The most perplexing part of not knowing the former owners or how to contact them generally centers around the mail...or the police when they surround your house looking for the previous owner. This happened to me a few days after we bought the house while I was waiting for the carpet guys. While waiting I noticed want looked like multiple shadows going around the side of the house and some gathering near the front door. Curious, I went to the front door and opened it as they were preparing to knock. At least I assume they were preparing to knock. I was not expecting to see several sheriffs with itchy hands fingering their weapons. After several minutes of explaining and showing multiple forms of I.D., it was determined that I was, indeed, who I said I was. Which, as the smartest of the bunch said, "That would explain why the car out front was registered to a different person than they were looking for." They searched the house to verify that I was not hiding the previous resident and did not have any evidence that might be material to why they were looking for him. And after instilling in me that finding this person was of the most serious matter and I should contact them if I do see him, they decided to leave. All this before we even met the neighbors.
The mailman seems to have a similar problem as he keeps delivering the mail for that person to the house. This was to be expected for the first few months, I thought, and each time I would write upon the mail "Return to Sender. Does not live at this address. No known forwarding address." and return them to the mailbox. This was almost two years ago and we receive the same amount of mail for this mysterious previous residence as we did the first week. Mind you this was after the house was abandoned for several months so its not like he doesn't know. I've met our surly mailman. Tried to be friendly, say hi, but all he can manage is a gruff nod and a glare. I'm not sure what I've done to anger him but clearly delivering our mail is a very tedious and arduous task, obviously deserving of great praise and adulation. Regardless, I appeared to have made an enemy of him long before I actual did anything to deserve it. About a year into owning the house, he left a note in our mailbox asking us to move the trash cans to the opposite side of our driveway. Let me add that our trash cans were nowhere near the mailbox. It just happens that our house is on the curve of the street, so where they were placed would block him from an easy angle getaway to the next house. Of course we acquiesced to his request, but it didn't seem to help much. Our mailman doesn't arrive until after the garbage truck and the garbage truck people rarely set the trash cans down where we put them. It seemed pointless to point this out to our mailman and rather than piss off the garbage truck people complaining they are setting it down too close to our mailman's getaway exit, we have accepted that our mailman thinks we're jerks.
Once you've accepted this, its hard to care about making his job easier. Will it make him bring the proper mail to our house and stop delivering the previous residents court summons and collections letters? Probably not. Will it make him more friendly and deliver our mail before 7pm? Probably not. In all fairness, he probably is underpaid, over worked, and doesn't have the time to even look at the address he's delivering it to. It might even be pre-sorted at the office, so really I have only the sorting machine to be angry at. In either case, I have clearly made an enemy of the mailman at the expense of staying friends with the garbage men.
Yesterday, my husband texted me with the question: "Was there a big pile of rocks in front of the house when you left?"
Thinking hard as I am rarely observant in the morning, I responded with a fairly certain, "No. Picture?"

His Response

Ah, no. Shit. The garbage men are not going to like that. Neither will the mailman. <insert impressive and fairly creative swearing regarding the genetic lineage of the person who decided to dump the rock pile there>
After much discussion, my husband persuaded the landscapers to move the rocks, but not all of it and certainly not in time for the garbage truck nor the mailman. While they did take our garbage, I imagine we have probably made them fairly grumpy with our clearly inconsiderate rock pile. It is possible we have acquired another enemy. I'm uncertain how to soothe the garbage men after this failure on our part. I can't imagine leaving fresh baked cookies on top of the garbage can with a note will be expectable. Perhaps instead we should complain about where they put the garbage cans and try to win back the affections of our surly mailman.

I'm not a (insert profession) but...

This is probably the most dreaded phrase professionals of any area can hear from a client. With the easy of access to information provided by various websites and search engines, almost any one has instant access to information once only available through years of training, education, and the dreaded white paper. Now anyone with a smart phone can find out which streets are normally crowded at 5pm on a Wednesday in a city they've never been to. I imagine doctors take the brunt of this with the amount of medical (mis)information available on the internet. I'm not saying the availability of this information is a bad thing, merely that its painfully obnoxious to have someone freaking out, convinced they have a brain tumor, when they are merely dehydrated. (Sometimes I just put in how I'm feeling that day into the WebMD symptom checker to see how many times I can get thyroid cancer to show up). Regardless, this happens in every industry, and as much as I dislike being on the receiving end of this phrase, I truly hate finding myself saying this.
The other evening, while admiring the new progress in the backyard, my husband says, "I wonder why they only have one gas line. This one goes out to the fire pit. What about the line for the BBQ?" To set the stage a bit more, here are two techno-geeks outside in their business attire staring into a trench with a yellow plastic hose "guessing" that its the gas line and wondering if they know more than the very experienced, hard working landscape contractors.

bright yellow line to fire pit

Neither my husband or I like being in this position. We're fully aware we are not the experts, but on the off chance something was forgotten, is it better to speak up now while fixes are easy to make. After tactfully wording an email, we decide to ask the next day.
It turns out that this was, indeed forgotten and there was some mild panicking as the inspector was suppose to come that afternoon. Things were fixed, disaster averted, Toyko saved, and we learned a valuable lesson.

Fixed! Duct tape solves everything...

It turns out the plan didn't clearly show the gas line split for the BBQ, and even though it had been discussed with the main contractor, it wasn't communicated to the foreman. We reviewed all the other details that weren't necessarily on the plan with the foreman to make sure everyone was on the same page. So what is the lesson we learned?
Get everything in writing?
Make sure everyone has a copy of all the details?
Trust your instincts?
I'm not a doctor but I'm farily sure I know which leg is broken?

Maybe we didn't learn a lesson.

Day 13: Still trenchy...

Things You Never Thought You'd Say

I've heard that your personality completely changes every 10 years. I don't really think that's true, but it makes sense that your decision making patterns change as you accumulate more experience. When you are little, you have limited experience, and so new experience causes change faster. For example,
Knowledge base: With a mask and snorkle, I can breath underwater.
Experience: Run through a camp fire and big cloud of smoke with mask and snorkle on.
Result: Addition to knowledge base that mask and snorkle do not grant you the ability to breath in all environmental conditions. Will probably treat all camp fires with more caution in future.

As you get older, your knowledge base is larger, and so new experiences make a smaller impact on you, resulting in a smaller change to you over time. That being the case, I'm still consistently surprised by my growing mental list of things I'd never thought I'd say.
Some things are the result of having a more refined taste as you get older:
Wow. Xena: Princess Warrior is awful. How did I watch two seasons of this?

Some things are the result growing out of disliking things because they are popular:
Ok, so yoga is kind of fun... and hard.
*Note: I'm still not willing to take back my theory that Yoga primarily the hobby of tiny stick figures who only do it so they have an excuse show how good they look naked to a wider audience than the beach.

And some things are the result of embracing your stupidity:
OMG! Say YES to the dress marathon! Call out for pizza! mama's parking on the couch for the next 12 hours.

However, most of the things that get added to my list are the direct result of sheer increduality:

• Why does the kitten insist upon licking my foot (everyday upon getting out of the shower)?
• Shit! The only way down is to jump over that rattle snake.
• We might have to jump into the outhouse pit (in response to the question, "what do we do if the bear breaks down the outhouse door?")
• Do NOT pet the baby bear cubs! (strangely, these were two separate bear related incidents)
• A.J.! There's the penis from the history channel! (Referring to a paving stone in pompei that directs you to the nearest brothel. I think I may have unfortunately said that a bit loudly and excitedly...)
• No, I did not put the plant in the cat's water dish

In all fairness that last one instituted the extremely helpful "least concerning" clause. This little rule requires one party not get mad at the other for asking a stupid question if they can explain why that was the least concerning scenario.
For example...

A.J.[9:04 AM]:
 Did you put the wheat grass in the kitty's water dish?

Mandy[10:17 AM]:
 What? No. Why the heck would I do that??

A.J.[11:12 AM]:
 An explanation of my txt...
 I figured after seeing the wheat grass in the water dish that it had to be 1 of 5 things that occured.

1. The plant was thirsty and climbed in on its own. (very concerning) 
2. I somehow did that without knowing. (very concerning) 
3. Abby [the cat] somehow picked up the plant and put it in there despite having a hard enough time eating it without knocking it over. (concerning) 
4. Someone came in the apt while we were gone and stuck the grass in there. (extremely concerning) 
5. You did that and had some logical explanation for doing so.

So I figured I would eliminate the least frightening prospect first.

Mandy[1:22 PM]:
 No, I did not put the plant in the cat's water dish.

Claiming "least concerning" has stopped many a stupid arguement and spousal grumpiness. I will admit it is usually me to say the something stupid... and probably too loudly ...and possibly with witnesses...*sigh*...
But now I have a new thing to add to this list of things I thought I'd never say:
"Oh my God! A.J., look! There's a hose bib! We have a hose bib!!"

a fore mentioned exciting hose bib

We now have something recognizable in the backyard as completely object. Granted, its not hooked up to anything just yet, but the pipes are laid, the trench is covered, and the hose bib stands. I never thought I'd be that excited about a hose bib, but there you have it. You'd think our backyard was like 99% complete for all my dancing around and multiple pictures. And I mean, really, all they have left to do is the rest of the irrigation, the drainage, the electrical and gas lines, the grass, the patio, the side yard garden beds, the pergola, and the lights. Practically done.

ok. I might have celebrated a little early, but progress in any form is exciting. Stay tuned for the list of "things I thought would fit in my car...but didn't"

The house by any other name is still the same damn house

How does one identify a house? I naively once thought it was as simple as an address, but various government agencies have shown me the error of my misguided thinking.
Our house has:

• an address
• a parcel number
• a lot and unit number with an estate location
• an assessor map number

Each of these things uniquely defines our house as an entity. However, depending on which government agency you are working with you may need to identify your house by one or all of these various numbers. I'm a bit confused by this concept.
Why does the county builders office use the parcel number, but the approval form needed to request a permit only references the lot and unit number?
Why do the property taxes reference the parcel number when clearly they are mailing it to the address and the value is based off the assessors report??
Why does the assessor report only refer to map number???

As a person I have several identification numbers. As I am a series of numbers and not an actual person to most agencies, I have to worry about my identity being stolen. But now I'm wondering if I have to worry about my house's identity being stolen...
Maybe I should tell the house to stop buying stupid stuff off of questionable websites. No more "no prescription Prozac" for this house.

Day 9:

Half Wall: looking more like a horse jump each day!

Backyard: now with more trenches!

The camera ate my homework and other excuses

If you're wondering why I haven't posted more pictures in the last couple posts, the card in our camera decided to die yesterday. Particularly obnoxious as I had not pulled the photos off for day 3 through 5 last week. Though in another light, I suppose there's only so many way to post a picture of a trench and say "Look its longer and deeper" (Editor's Note: adding pictures captioned with that phrase to your blog brings in a lot of interesting traffic from search engines. Re-phrasing suggested).
We've entered this phase of construction where its not entirely possible to tell what was done that day.

We aimlessly wander around the yard after work and think, "Is that trench deeper?" or "Was that hole there yesterday?" And while I'm sure our neighbors can tell you exactly how long it took to jack hammer another inch off that rock buried in the main trench, it is hard to look at the end of the day and identify the progress that was made.
Day 8: Main features of note...

Trench: Now long and deeper!

Rock: Now a few inches shorter!

Other Trench: Now with drainage pipes!

Half wall: Now looking more like a half wall!

Ok, that last is a little unfair. One modification I insisted on for our design was a wide double stair from our patio down to the grass area, with a slightly higher half wall on each side that can serve a bench for the grass area. I'd like to claim that this was an artistic measure. Realistically, I see myself running out the door, across the patio and using the half wall as a leap point to fly over into a nice tumble roll on the grass. I have several excuses lined up for why someone my age would do this ranging from ludicious to arguable (one must practice falling if you are to prone to it anyways and wish to remain mostly unharmed). However, I think it just sounds like fun and there's no one to see me make a fool of myself in the backyard...Other than my husband...and he knew what he was getting into when my dad said "no backsies" at our wedding.
Regardless, the half wall is the most interesting thing in the backyard at this point and I'm truly excited by it because its the first thing that it starting to show us proportion and placement according to the design. Now we can look out into the yard and know about where the patio and grass areas are. It's also slightly entertaining to look into the yard and just see these two little cement and cinderblock walls. I imagine our neighbors looking into the backyard and thinking, "Are the putting in small horse jumps?"

The Importance of a Water Features and Space Golf

When talking about our backyard the first thing most people have asked is, "Oh are you putting in a pool?" I generally refrain from my first reaction of, "Oh God, No!", and instead patiently explain why a pool is not a reasonable thing for us. There are numerious reasons for not having a pool from safety issues with small children, to expense issues with maintenance and heating, to the general practicality of carving out a large hole in our rock slab - err, backyard. To further dissuade us, less than two miles from the house is...

1. a lake
2. a river
3. a community pool

For us, a pool is not particularly practical. That being said, they do add a beautiful focal point to a yard, so many contractors looked at our design and said, "where's your water feature?"

The short answer is we really don't have one. I'm not sure when in the course of the last twenty years we've cross from a simple lawn in the backyard to "outdoor living spaces" complete with terminology like "water feature", but I blame the DIY and HG channels. When we first started thinking about the backyard I wanted shade, a lawn, and a small vegetable garden to perform my ritual plant killing.
It grew from this simple idea to include more ridiculous elements partly because we had the space, and partly because at some point our backyard became a dream. A fabulous dream which never really seemed real or possible. Something that was on the "someday" list in the same way you always want to visit exotic locations but can't really imagine getting to the point in your life where you have the money or time. Being this unrealistic dream we just started adding exotic things to it because the entire concept seemed just as far fetched.
Imagine it this way: You really want to go to the moon, and so you decide when you get to the moon, you'd like to try to golf, so you start trying to figure out what the rules for space golf should be and designing the perfect space clubs. Its very unlikely that you'll get to the moon, but on the off chance you do, you might as well get to play space golf.
Our backyard is the moon and space golf is the fire pit, spa, and putting green. Mind you, none of our space golf features are in phase one, but they have the potential to be realized at a later date.

But wait! Isn't a spa a water feature? 

Apparently not if it is above ground and will be covered. Go figure.

We had our first unexpected additional cost today, but it wasn't in the backyard. Apparently one of the irrigation pipes under our driveway has been leaking for awhile and, more recently, the water now drains out of a small crack in the driveway when the sprinklers run. 

Am I a water feature?

Advantageous Digging Clauses

Early on when interviewing contractors we heard of someone called an "Advantageous Digging" clause. This is a fancy way to say if the contractor encounters a rock they can't dig up, they're going to charge us more. Given that our backyard, as previously discussed, is 99.2% rock, this concerned us. I completely understand that this is done to protect the contractor from losing money over basically bad luck, but the question became what is the "expected" level of rock digging effort. I mean, you can look at our backyard and see that its going to be filled with large rocks that are difficult to dig up, so we don't want to pay additional fees for poor planning.
The contractor we went with explained his clause like this: If we find a rock so big we can't dig it out or work around it, and we have to bring in a guy to blow it up with explosives, your fee will be what he charges. Not only did this seem fair, but also slightly awesome. I want to see someone use dynamite to explode a giant rock in my backyard! Of course, we don't want to have to pay extra, so we're hoping we don't encounter this situation, but at least it has an upside. Many times in life you have unexpected costs, most don't involve you getting to watch something blow up though. If my water bill came with free tickets to a monster truck rally, I'd probably be less grumpy about it.
Today they dug out what looked like most of the trenches needed for the drainage - which is a lot. Apparently the original builder decided that drainage for our house was completely unnecessary, so all the drains in the front yard and roof, all go to a pipe that is just an open hole in our side yard. This creates our seasonal side yard wetlands which has yet to become home to any endangered species, but does a fabulous job of looking like a swamp. Due to this, our most important task for phase one in the backyard was getting all the drainage put in correctly. This requires digging the trenches really close to the house's foundation (to connect to the downspouts from the roof) which unsurprisingly meant that you could feel every pick axe blow to the rocks they encountered through the floor...while I worked from home.
...type, type, type....ding, ding....type, type, type.....ding, ding, ding...type..ding...*sigh*

After they left for the day I went out to check out the changes and discovered over a hundred feet in new trenches. And in the dead center of the trench closest to the house, sticking up just a few inches from the top of the 3ft trench, was the top of a very large rock. Hrmmm....
Maybe they can work around that. Maybe they just got tired for the day and they'll get it out tomorrow. Maybe we'll get to watch this rock explode into tiny bits!!! mahahahaha...

Heading back inside, I decided to text my husband about the giant rock:

 

Visualization

Have you ever looked at the pieces in the ikea furniture box and thought, "Did I grab the right box?" I'm one of those people. I have spent hours going over the six 3x4 foot pages of architectural diagrams about our backyard but I have no idea how its really going to look when its finished. That's a pretty big deal when you are putting a ton of money into someone's vision of what they think you want.
I know there is cement, a pergola, and grass. I have a vague idea of where they are located in the backyard. I have a hazy idea of what I think it'll look like when its finished, but seeing the changes in the backyard is truly entertaining. Like going on a treasure hunt...
Look there's a hole! I wonder why there a hole here. Is this where they put the sleeves for the irrigation pipes? Or, wait no, there a spray painted G over there with a rod in the ground, so maybe this is for the gas line? Or is this the tunnel to the fall out shelter for the Giant Wolf Spiders in our garage? How did they get to the architect? I guess we could build them a pool too. 
Author's Note: We have some really large wolf spiders. When i say large, i mean like smallish tarantula size. You can hear them when they run. Did I mention they jump too? Delightful little monsters. However, they have a welcomed position in our garage and are encouraged to make themselves at home because they are really intimidating...and they eat black widows. Mostly the intimidating part though. 

Giant Wolf Spider Motto: Be Prepared!

At the end of the day today we have spray marks as to where the pergola will be going and some of the dirt has been re-arranged to form what will be the steps down to the grass. Now that I can see where things are going in the yard, it seems really big to me. And while the vision in my head is still try to adjust to the new proportions, they ask me about colors?
I assume the contractor knows I have no idea what I'm doing and he's just really nice about it. A.J. and I debated on the the color of the cement and the pergola for all of 15 minutes, then shrugged, and said, "I guess these". Now that we've picked it I'm having second thoughts. What if we picked the wrong colors? We were pretty limited on the colors for the pergola, and the cement colors looked like a box of crayola crayons. You ruled out 90% of the cement colors by just not being color blind and/or bat shit insane. We ended up with a pergola color that exactly matched the color of the house - which is amazing when you think that it took us three months of trips to and from home depot to properly match the paint color of our house. Yep, "Deer Run" was one of the six possible colors. I had intended to do a nice coppery black color for the pergola, but there were no dark color options. This made our choice of a dark gray cement possibly a little strange. 

And now this gets added to the list of things I worry about in the middle of the night:
What if A.J. dies?
What if my parents get sick?
What if I lose my job?
What if the cats get outside and get run over?
What if the house burns down?
What if I picked the wrong cement and pergola color?

I should really start keeping shoes and three cat carriers by the bed.

The Art and Business of Perserverence

One of the strange (and fantastic) features of the house is the drive through garage. No, this isn't where I forget to put the car in reverse and drive through our bedroom (a deep seated fear of my husband's though I've never shown any inclination toward doing so). Our garage is split into two: a regular garage, and a little garage that has a garage door in the front and back (opening up to our backyard) so you can literally drive through into the backyard. This is fantastic for getting things into the backyard with one minor exception: they can't be any wider or taller than the garage door itself.
Things that fall into the fantastic: BBQ, large table, kayak, wood, tools, ladders, small to medium sized mammals, hammocks, etc.
Things that have a problem: Our contractor's excavator. Oh, and a ski boat named Sam, but that's another story.
The excavator, as my brilliant 4 year old nephew will tell you, is the thing that digs (Like, seriously, this kid knows all the construction equipment. I didn't even know most had specific names! I once got a lecture when he was two over the difference between a "large excavator" and a "small excavator" because I failed to call them by their size descriptive names). And while our contractor's excavator was a "small excavator", it was still too tall to drive through our garage.
Being the glass half full kind of guy, our foreman went around to the fire road access in the valley below our house and drove the excavator up the backside of the hill. Apparently with proper balance and leverage, you make it up the slope (read: If you have balls of steel, you can storm the keep. Gravity is for cowards!). Now we know where those tracks in the google maps satellite picture came from. After celebrating his success of getting the excavator into the backyard (I like to imagine a round of beers in an old wooden pub while busty bar maids in old time corsets listened wide eye to his tales of valor with his trusty steed, excavator), there was still the arduous task of actually digging.
The amount of rocks they dug up in the 25 feet of the drainage trench that was finished yesterday only confirmed my theory that the backyard in 99.2% rock. While digging the trench we also got a better look at our possible storm drain pipe in the side yard and it is much smaller than we were envisioning. I was picturing like Shawshank Redemption crawl to freedom sized pipe, not cat sized hamster tube. 

More kitty tubes, MORE!

While its size is less than impressive, we did confirm its existence, and there should be no impact to construction or plans.

Status Day 2: Backyard still flat, more rocks moved, drainage trench mostly dug.

The Backyard Peace Treaty of 2001 has been Broken

Today they started working in the backyard. Still not having won the lottery, I was forced to go to work instead of bearing witness to this asupcious occassion. Despite knowing what the intended backyard result is, I'm not exactly sure what the steps are to bring it about. I suspect today's activities generally consist of "Bulldoze everything. Avoid damaging the house". 

This is reason #3 why we are not doing the backyard ourselves. If you are wondering why this is not reason #1, you are clearly not paying attention to my previous predisposition toward "how hard can it be?" Much to my husband's great frustration I had a tendency to just "try to figure it out". And not by researching or reading the manual. Oh no, manuals are for people who don't already know everything. I "figure things out" general by trying different things and observing the reaction. Also, I'm a big fan of taking things apart whether or not I think I can put it back together (Really, how hard can it be? I got it apart). You can see how this is extremely annoying to my engineer of a husband. This isn't the worse part, though. The terrible part of this is I actually happen to be pretty good at this and have a mostly positive batting average for figuring out strange and complex problems. The most commonly heard refrain in our house during a project is generally, "Just because its fixed doesn't mean you did it the right way". Bah. It's fixed. Problem solved.
Why is this important? Left to my own devices, I probably would attempt to just try to figure out how to drive a bobcat, pour cement, and install drainage. This brings us to reason #2 we're not doing the backyard ourselves...

I'm cheap. My dad used to say he was the second cheapest man in the world. The first was my grandfather. Well, clearly some things are genetic, because I certainly inherited this. When we first moved in, my inclination was to do everything ourselves to save money. What I learned instead was that many things are more cheaply done if you hire someone to do and watch them, asking questions, to learn how to do it yourself later (when it breaks again). This isn't true for everything. I'm fairly competent at many plumbing things now, and, of course, I still have to fight my urge to think "How hard can it be?" but the backyard was not one of those things. I was positive this is something that is much better and more cheaply done if someone else does it. Maybe not, but this leads us to reason #1 we are not doing the backyard ourselves...

Due to a series of repetitive close encounters with baby and adult rattlesnakes over my lifetime, I have developed a, dare I say, HEALTHY dislike of rattlesnakes and an extreme disinclination to come into close proximity of them. I completely understand their role in the food chain, their value to nature, and respect them as a fellow meat consuming predator. That being said, if they are in my house, garage, or yard, they are fair game for being shot (I hear you laughing at the in the house part, but I assure you this has happened to me before). I am generally inclined to leave any creature alone in the yard as long as its not actively threatening me. As we live in rattlesnake country and the rock piles in our backyard are prime living quarters for them, I am absolutely astonished that we have yet to encounter one in the time we've been living there. Other neighbors have had trouble during this time, but we have yet to witness a rattlesnake in the yard.
I can only assume that this is due to the previous Peace Treaty of 2001 that the previous owners had with the rattle snake overlords to define the Backyard Snake/Human Borders. Now that we've started the backyard, we are clearly in violation of the terms of the Peace Treaty and I expect vicious retaliation. 

Backyard Status Day 1: After work today, the backyard is a bit flatter and some rocks have been moved. We have lost our 2.5 bushes and the kidney bean pond hole has been filled in. Carefully laid on rocks were the bodies of two baby rattle snakes sans head. I'm tempted to bury them as the first causalities of war. Tonight we mourn all the things that lost their battles in our backyard: the pond, the bushes, the snakes.

The Seven Wonders of our Backyard

Its amazing how attached you can get to something. Our backyard wasn't much of anything, but its sad to think it will never look that way again (baring zombie apocalypse and nuclear war). When we first moved in we used to wander through the yard to speculate on some of its strange mysteries...

1. The Holy Mystery of the Kidney Bean - In the south west corner of the yard was a fairly large kidney bean shaped hole about 7 feet by 3 feet. This was surrounded by a half circle of the local granite rocks that were of the vaguely flattish, seat-like variety. Was it to be a fire pit? A pond? The pond theory seemed more likely given the exactness of the kidney bean shape. Did they actually have a plastic pond that they dug up and took with them? Or did they just dig a hole and try to fill it up with water? Before you say no one is that stupid, I have seen people do this before, having no idea that the ground will just absorb the water. My husband speculated that hobos used the pit for a bonfire when the house was abandoned. This eventually lead to suspicions of dark hippy cult rituals. My money is still on the pond theory.
2. The Ancient Rock Pyramids of Budweiser - Located in the farthest corner of the property is a 4 foot tall rock pyramid. Adorning its base and hidden within it are a whole bunch of empty Budweiser beer cans. Ignoring the beer cans for now, the pyramid is oddly placed and not very will built. It looks more like a palace that the rattle snake overlords forced the previously owners to build for them in exchange for honoring the backyard human rattle snake borders of the treaty of 2001. Full beers were left in offering periodically to ensure appease their snake masters. Since moving in we have ignored their offering ritual, but we have yet to find a rattle snake in the backyard. Perhaps there's a grace period.
3. The Ancient Aqueducts - Once thought to be an ancient writing carved into the ground to communicate to aliens, we now believe several of these 6inch deep troughs to be someone's attempt to put in sprinklers or some sort of irrigation. They are a bit haphazardly dug in making me suspect this was a self construction attempted activity.
4. The Red Dragon of Corner-copia - The first summer we lived in the house we had to weed-wack everything in the backyard and out ten feet to preserve the fire line. Excited to discover what critters lived in our backyard (and wanted to eat us), I started with the areas closest to the house. Imagine my surprise when in a shady corner of the house there was a large red lizard. When say large, I mean about 1ft long by 2-3inch wide. And Red. Bright Red. Needless to say this is not a native of northern California. Being as surprise by my appearance as I was with it, the lizard stuck out this tongue in the manner of the roadrunner from looney toons (sans meep, meep) and sped off into a hole tucked under the corner of our house's foundation. We speculate that he was someone's pet but haven't seen him since, so I imagine him wandering the open fields searching in vain for another lizard that looks like himself. He only wants love.
5. The Olive Tree of Endurance and the Honey Badger Plant - There are approximately two and a half plants in our backyard. The half plant is a long dead shrub that is so firmly rooted in the ground, I haven't removed it for fear it is a load bearing shrub, and its disappearance would cause the house to collapse. The other two are alive and at least one appears to be planted on purpose. Let me first educate you on the climate and soil consistency of our backyard... Our backyard consists of rock. There a small smattering of dirt around these rocks to give it a level-ish look, but it is 99.2% large granite boulders (four out of five dentists told me this). It is full south facing with no trees or other shade structures making it surface of the sun hot during the day, and then, because this is the foothills, ice cold at night. Even the one cell plant-like algae on the rocks looks like its suffering. There is no water. When it does rain there is a small swamp in the front corner of our house, but none of it makes it to the backyard. And then there are the periodic hurricane force winds that come up from the valley and try to knock the house down. In short, nothing should grow back there. Three things do however: some type of bush that looks consists with a dwarf olive tree, a monstrous plant vaguely resembling an Oleander, and blackberry vines. Is it the later of the three that is naturally occurring due to birds that eat the berries from plants farther down the valley and then poop in our yard. Blackberry vines are very invasive and hard to kill. We do our best to beat any new growth back each month and this leads us to the final reason nothing should grow in our backyard. Once a year, we poison the crap out of the backyard to keep the blackberry growth at a manageable level. Why anything grows in our backyard is beyond me. That being said, those two bushes are doing just fine. The olive bush looks like it might not be a "intentionally planted" plant and has stayed roughly the same size with a handful of leaves. Those leaves fall off in the winter and the same ones grow back in the spring. It is the very picture of endurance. The oleander is a much more enthusiastic plant. We've tried to dig it up several times (as its trying to strangle our AC unit) but can't manage to get its gnarly root base out. We've settled for cutting it back to its 1ft nub of a root and then in a few weeks its back to its 6ft high thick green leafy self. It too has been poisoned repeatedly and doesn't care. Honey Badger Plant don't give a shit.
6. The Glass Beach - Just outside the backdoor the ground is littered with different color pebbles and glass stones. The pebbles are all different sizes and looks like someone was tossing samples down to figure out which ground cover they liked best. There are no other rocks in any area that match these which leads us to wonder if this was an actual attempt to put in ground cover. It's very, um, eclectic.
7. The Buried Tomb of Dead Leaves Gone Past - A few months ago, I noticed a patch of very smooth cement on the side of yard. I tried to dig around it a bit and it just kept going. Walking down the side of the yard further I noticed another patch of smooth cement about 25 feet from the previous patch. About 20 feet from this is the drop of a storm drain cover that happens to be on the corner of our proper. There used to be an easement but apparently this is now a defunct drain (in theory). However, the drain pipe for a storm drain should be several feet underground. Not a half inch below the dust making up your side yard. We're still not entirely sure if this is the storm drain. We've had a couple experts look at it, but it seems likely it is and it was several feet underground, until the builder built our row of houses leveling off perhaps a little too much. We took into account this may be the case and planned to build up that side of the yard with dirt to give the plants some space to grow. Hopefully this will not be an issue.

In our attempt to figure out some of the mysterious things in our backyard we've used google maps satellite images which have not been updated since before we bought the house. In it there is a mysterious part of the fence which looks purposefully torn down and tire tracks leading into the fields and valley behind the house.
At one point I speculated that they tore down the fence to get some big equipment in to do some work, but as my husband pointed out, its a very long way from any street access to drive equipment and its got to get up the hill, so perhaps not. It will remain a mystery.
All of these little strange bits add up to a very unique and interesting backyard and, in a strange way, I'm sad to see it go. To celebrate the last day of our backyard as is, we decided to have an outside picnic. Due to dry grass, we parked the BBQ in the front drive, and grilled some ka-roberts (fancy kabobs, according to A.J.), then dined in the back with a couple of friends. Good time was had by all. Not such a bad send off for our weird and strange backyard.  

 

Backyards without borders

This is our backyard now:

You might notice the distinct lack of fence. This is not entirely our fault, but it does happen to represent our sole contribution to the backyard up to this point. When we moved in the fence was already partly falling down. This was in the home inspection report - Just in case we happened to miss the 50ft of fallen down wood in the middle of the 110ft fence line. Honestly, you might have been too distracted by the dry rot on the back door.
Apparently the popsicle stick fence the builder put up couldn't quite withstand the hurricane force winds that come up from the valley. Shocking.
Regardless, since we had from the very beginning intended to completely landscape the backyard, it seemed silly to replace the fence until we were ready to build. Thus the fence was left in its state of partially standing...for a whole three months.
About three months into owning the house, we get a letter from our home insurance company letting us know our back fence is unsafe and unless we fix it they will revoke our insurance. To paint the picture a bit more, this is the same insurance company that didn't care when shit was coming out of our ceiling because of badly installed toilet upstairs three days after we moved in while the inside of our house was being painted. The same company that didn't care that our dishwasher, refrigerator, garbage disposal all died within weeks of moving in. And would be the same company that would refuse to cover our sewage pump when it broke in another month from the arrival of this letter.
Our fence that backs up to acres of wilderness, with no access to any other houses or roads unless you are already trespassing on our property and have made it past the many hidden pot holes, rocks, loose gravel, thorn bushes, and rattle snakes that make up out back yard. Yes, that fence. It's unsafe? Really?
Picture painted? Good. You can imagine just where fixing this fence rate on our scale of "shower that won't turn off" to "what's that smell coming from the light you just fixed". None the less, the insurance company had a valid point from their perspective and we didn't want to lose the insurance in case it would one day actually cover something. After much discussion we agreed the only logical thing to do would be to dismantle the entire fence, thus remove the problem.
A few months later the insurance company followed up saying we needed to provide proof of the repaired fence. I politely told her, we decided to just remove the fence instead.
This seemed to confuse her....

Agent: You mean, you didn't fix the fence?
Me: Nope, we just took it down. We plan to re-do the whole backyard anyways in another year. Seemed pretty pointless. 
Agent: So there's no fence?
Me: No 
Agent: Then what do you have there?
Me: Nothing. Its just open. 

<....awkward pause....>

Me: Do we need to have a fence?
 Agent: Well, no, I guess not. 
Me: So do you just want me to send you a picture of the empty land where the fence was?
Agent: Um...

<....awkward pause....>

Agent: Let me ask my manager and get back to you.

A few days later I was asked to send a picture of the empty land where the fence once was showing that there was no longer a fence. See? Don't we all feel safer now. 

Seeking Approval

When suburbia invades a new open land area, I imagine a bunch of rich old guys get together around a table and have a conversation like this:

Old Rich Guy 1: How can we market the new housing development on the edge of the boonies as fashionable?
Old Rich Guy 2: I know, put the entire county under committee control, so we can tell people what color to paint their house. 
Together: BAHAHAHAHA.

No, Seriously. Our entire city is controlled by CC&Rs. For those of you who don't know what this is, its basically a list of rules you have to abide by that ranges from how many snakes you can own (1 reptile), where it can live (not outside), to what color you can paint your house (apparently not always the same color as it was when you originally bought it). Some of the rules are pretty hilarious (we can choose to own either cats or dogs, but apparently not both) but mostly it just means that you have to get everything you do to the outside of your house approved by a committee before you do it, or they'll fine you (if your neighbors turn you in).
Thinking our neighbors might notice the large amounts of construction equipment needed for our backyard, and not wanting to compete with the guy who keeps a pigeon outside, we decided to get the design approved.
This involved submitting the design in triplicate (20 pages of 3x4 foot sheets of drafting paper), pictures of the area as is, and samples of any materials being use.
Right. Well we did the first two and decided to submit anyway.
In our defense, the sample of materials is a bit broad. Did they want a sample of the miniature banana trees? Can't we just promise not to get a pergola in hot pink? Do they even make hot pink pergolas?

It turned out to be not a big deal. The committee seemed very nice and even helpful, pointing out that portions of our yard might not get enough sun for what we were planting there. While I still don't particularly like the concept of CC&Rs, its nice to see its applied in a reasonable way.

Hooray for approval! Breaking ground next week!

The steep path back to reality

Flashback a year previous...

A.J.: The back door and the frame has dry rot. 
Me: How much do you think that will cost to fix?
A.J.: I don't know. $500? Maybe more. 
Me: Yikes. Can't we fix it?
A.J.: You know how to install a door and new frame?
Me:   No, but they come in kits at Home Depot. I saw it on DIY.
A.J.: You really want to try?
Me: How hard can it be?

Very @#$%ing hard! Even with help, it was pretty much a disaster. Technically it works, but requires three oxen to open or close.
This was pretty much the first thing we fixed on the house and it was an exceptionally good lesson in the first rule of home repair. If you can't live with it being on pieces on the floor for a few days you should probably ask for professional help.
We had looked at the backyard design as a project that we could do in small pieces over years, even possibly do parts ourselves. As we interviewed different contractors, we knew it would be expensive, so we had them keep this idea in mind. Do it in phases. If you can cut cost with a similar idea, pitch it. Everything in the design was negotiable.
The estimates varied a tiny bit between contractors, but even missing a partial roman temple with pillars, it was still expensive.
We talked about which parts we thought we could do ourselves (like the vegetable garden), but every time I caught myself thinking "How hard can it be?" I would find myself looking at that goddamn door and feel the universe laughing at me.
Due to the way things in the design overlap, there wasn't really a good way to do the first phase cheaply. It started with we just want the patio. Well then the grading and the drainage has to be done. Also the posts have to be poured for the pergola even if you're not doing it. At this point the cost was high enough that adding on the actual pergola was almost negligible.
And, hey well you're at it, might as well put in the lights and fans on the pergola.
And if you're putting in sleeves and stubbing off the gas, you might as well pull it over to the BBQ area and hook it up so you can use it.
And you know, grass is only a thousand dollars. Since we're putting in sleeves for the irrigation, we might as well put in the grass and add portions of the irrigation.
Heck, just add in the vegetable garden at this point because the contractor is going to do it better and cheaper than we will be able to stumbling through our outback version of The Back Door.
You can see where this is heading I hope?...No?....

Me: O.K. At what point should we just do the whole backyard and just get this over with?
A.J.: Yeah. That'd be nice...
Me: Did we win the lottery and I just didn't notice?
A.J.: No. Sorry, but no. 
Me: Well, shit then. Phase 1 it is!

We did toy with the idea of doing it all at once and just taking out a loan, but I'm a chicken and the mortgage still frightens me. It doesn't need an entourage.
Having chosen a contractor and a scoped phase that was more reasonable, we proceeded with the next step: Getting the Design Approved.